Hanna-Barbera didn’t waste any time promoting its latest product for the Ideal Toy company in its Flintstones Sunday comics, did it? The first TV show featuring the Rubbles’ adopted Bamm-Bamm aired on October 3, 1963. And he’s in the comics on October 27th.
(As a side note, the opening scene in the Bamm-Bamm TV debut looks like Jerry Hathcock to me. The opening teaser is the work of Ken Muse. I’ll accept corrections).
Unlike the cartoon series, Bamm-Bamm here thinks to himself, and like an adult, while Pebbles acts like an infant. Well, in this comic anyway. She has adult thoughts in other comics. But who needs consistency?
Fred has rounder eyes in these comics from 50 years ago this month. And, unless I’m just noticing it now, his eyes are half-closed a lot of the time. I suspect Harvey Eisenberg, at this point, was only drawing the Yogi Sunday newspaper pages and not the Flintstones, but I’d like to hear from people who can talk with some expert ability on this sort of thing.
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October 6th has a dotted line that divides a panel. I don’t know if I’ve seen that before. Notice the final panel’s at an angle.
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Wait till Wilma gets those hooks in her ear. She won’t be so happy. Barney looks straight at us in the final panel of the October 13th comic. That’s an awfully large mailbox in the opening panel.
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Awww. Domestic bliss. “The Flintstones” comic of October 20th sure isn’t what the TV series started out to be, is it? I like the grinning Fred, though, and the wavy boxes are a nice flashback touch.
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And here’s the Bamm-Bamm comic debut on October 27th. Sorry, folks. While I’m not crazy about Pebbles, there were some decent cartoons made with her. Bamm-Bamm is just derivative and one-note. And the series got worse from there. When it comes to kids, I’d rather see Fred battle Arnold the paperboy (if they’d turned Arnold into a kind of Julius Abruzzio from the Phil Harris-Alice Faye radio show, that would have been pretty funny. They could have hired Walter Tetley to bring back his old voice. And didn’t Hanna-Barbera borrow stuff from radio and TV anyway?).
As usual, click on each shabbily-scanned comic to enlarge it. Stay tuned next month to see if the words “Gomf” and “Kwork” show up again.
(As a side note, the opening scene in the Bamm-Bamm TV debut looks like Jerry Hathcock to me. The opening teaser is the work of Ken Muse. I’ll accept corrections).
Unlike the cartoon series, Bamm-Bamm here thinks to himself, and like an adult, while Pebbles acts like an infant. Well, in this comic anyway. She has adult thoughts in other comics. But who needs consistency?
Fred has rounder eyes in these comics from 50 years ago this month. And, unless I’m just noticing it now, his eyes are half-closed a lot of the time. I suspect Harvey Eisenberg, at this point, was only drawing the Yogi Sunday newspaper pages and not the Flintstones, but I’d like to hear from people who can talk with some expert ability on this sort of thing.
October 6th has a dotted line that divides a panel. I don’t know if I’ve seen that before. Notice the final panel’s at an angle. 
Wait till Wilma gets those hooks in her ear. She won’t be so happy. Barney looks straight at us in the final panel of the October 13th comic. That’s an awfully large mailbox in the opening panel. 
Awww. Domestic bliss. “The Flintstones” comic of October 20th sure isn’t what the TV series started out to be, is it? I like the grinning Fred, though, and the wavy boxes are a nice flashback touch. 
And here’s the Bamm-Bamm comic debut on October 27th. Sorry, folks. While I’m not crazy about Pebbles, there were some decent cartoons made with her. Bamm-Bamm is just derivative and one-note. And the series got worse from there. When it comes to kids, I’d rather see Fred battle Arnold the paperboy (if they’d turned Arnold into a kind of Julius Abruzzio from the Phil Harris-Alice Faye radio show, that would have been pretty funny. They could have hired Walter Tetley to bring back his old voice. And didn’t Hanna-Barbera borrow stuff from radio and TV anyway?). As usual, click on each shabbily-scanned comic to enlarge it. Stay tuned next month to see if the words “Gomf” and “Kwork” show up again.